Memeorandum

November 30, 2012

Most Misleading Headline Ever?

In their ongoing effort to persuade the public to quit whinging about higher taxes the Dead Tree NY Times delivers a misleading headline for the record books:

Complaints Aside, Most Face Lower Tax Burden Than In The Reagan 80's

The text goes on to compare the total Federal, state and local tax burden in 1980 with that of 2010, which prompts a question - when did Reagan take office and launch his first round of tax cuts? 1981, yes? Surely the Times editors remember the timing of the Descent of Darkness.

So maybe a better headline would be "Taxes Lower than in the Carter Era", which would deliver a less surprising message and make a less compelling case that we are currently under-taxed.

I infer that the Times editors have realized their problem. Online, the current headline is:

Complaints Aside, Most Face Lower Tax Burden Than in 1980

No kidding - most face a lower burden than in 1980, when everyone felt over-taxed. We can spot the evolution (or is it intelligent design?) of their headline by way of the website URL (my emphasis):

ERRATA: The CBO calculates the total Federal tax burden, including imputed corporate taxes. For the three lower quintiles of earners the Reagan years were not so great, tax-wise - the cut in the Federal income tax was roughly offset by the increase in the Social Security tax.

Finding the total Federal, state and local burden back to 1980 has me stumped just now, although this Tax Foundation report reaches back to 1991.

The only judge ever to consider the question of "at birth" being synonymous with "natural born" was Judge Alsup in the McCain case, and he saw it my way. Granted it was dicta (Ankeny remains the only case ever to adjudicate "natural born" on the merits, but it is dicta concerning the very issue under consideration, not a peripheral matter. Relying on Section 1401, he wrote:

This order finds it highly probable, for the purposes of this motion for provisional relief, th

at Senator McCain is a natural born citizen.
They specifically said about NBC there are no doubts.

Not exactly. They specifically said that there was no doubt that a person born on US soil to two American parents was an NBC. As the Ankeny court noted, they left open the question of, among others, children born on US soil to one American and one alien.

The only judge ever to consider the question of "at birth" being synonymous with "natural born" was Judge Alsup in the McCain case, and he saw it my way. Granted it was dicta (Ankeny remains the only case ever to adjudicate "natural born" on the merits, but it is dicta concerning the very issue under consideration, not a peripheral matter. Relying on Section 1401, he wrote:

This order finds it highly probable, for the purposes of this motion for provisional relief, that Senator McCain is a natural born citizen.

They specifically said about NBC there are no doubts.

Not exactly. They specifically said that there was no doubt that a person born on US soil to two American parents was an NBC. As the Ankeny court noted, they left open the question of, among others, children born on US soil to one American and one alien.

That's a great link, Clarice. It sounds like a whole lotta bad actors in that case are about to get the hook. There are so many people, including tertiary dimwits like LeBron James and Spike Lee, who need to have their simple faces rubbed in it but probably never will. Still there are primary and secondary players who appear to be getting prepped for high colonics and then some.

"At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens..."

GZ and the Scheme Team have been getting a lot of local play here the last few days but I have been reluctant to aggregate it all and post. There is also the eyewitness testimony - a guy who saw Martin on top of Zimmerman hitting him MMA (mixed martial arts) style. He was 30 feet away looking out his living room window. Yelled he was calling 911 and heard a "pop" and saw the guy who was on top fall. Now the school records of Trayvon have been subpoenaed after the State tried to block them.

Also, there is an unrelated shooting of a young AA in Jacksonville by a 40 something Caucasian man that is on Corey's plate. Seems the guy thought the kid was going for gun while sitting in his car listening to loud music and he got his gun and shot the kid making it into another Trayvon type hold your ground kind of shooting.

It looks like the GZ case is going to be coming to a head here pretty soon and will give us all a break from jumping over the cliff and whether any of us are NBC.

I received a link from Insty that led me to JOM during the Libby trial. I believe in what Sue postulated.
I think Armitage was going to be prosecuted by Fitzgerald if he talked. Fitzgerald was always shiftily targeting Cheney, Rove and then had to be satisfied with Libby. That the original leaker, Armitage got off scott free is amazing to me. I remember the day of the Libby verdict. I was so sure he would be acquitted. It was the first time I started to mistrust our legal system. All the people at NBC are culpable for lying and covering up the facts. It was at that time that I stopped watching that network. An innocent man's livelihood was on the line and they did nothing to clarify the situation and consequently were promoted and suffered no consequences.

"Yesterday, in his closing argument, he struck a much different note. Speaking to the jury, Wells said Libby "has been in my protection for the past month."

Now, he told them, he was turning Libby over to them.

Then, as he asked the jury to presume Libby's innocence and "give him back to me," Wells began to cry. He sat down at the defense table and wiped his eyes.

It was a strange moment in a strange case.

Before beginning his argument yesterday morning, he paced in front of the empty jury box. He stood in a corner --tall, athletic, mustachioed -- like a fighter imaging the bout to come. Under the outwardly gentle guise you could see an inner toughness of someone who will use any combination of punches to win big.

Family and friends came to watch him work. At one point he stopped to check on his 83-year-old mother, Phyllis, who sat in a wheelchair in the courtroom aisle.

There were moments when he seemed out of sync, checking on how much time he had left, hurrying through slides in his PowerPoint presentation.

At other times, he was impressive, trying to convince the jury that the prosecution was attempting to ruin Libby based on a few conversations with reporters. In charcoal suit, white shirt and red tie, he marched through pertinent evidence, occasionally lapsing into shtick.

He said he didn't agree with the way the prosecution portrayed his opening argument. "Maybe I was drunk or something," he said, working the jury like a Jay Leno audience."

It was the first time I started to mistrust our legal system. All the people at NBC are culpable for lying and covering up the facts. It was at that time that I stopped watching that network.

Same here, maryrose.

I don't think I posted before... maybe May 2009. I read everything...but didn't post.(I have like 3 thick file folders full of Libby notes) I didn't know what a "web site URL" was in the third line & figured I needed one to post! Hah!

I went to the Meet Clarice lunch before the 9-12-2009 rally & I hadn't been posting that long. I "knew" everyone though from being a lurker.

"At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens..."

DoT claims this supports his interpretation rather than mine. BS.

To repeat for anyone easily swayed by authoritative misreading ...

1. A person born on US soil to two American parents is therefore no doubt a citizen.

Why is there no doubt? Because ...

2. That is the definition of a Natural Born Citizen (in the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar).

Apparently once a misreading has taken hold it must be difficult for some people to ever read the original clear English meaning.

Thanks for that wiki excerpt, AC.
Presumably the cost to benefit ratio on fitting cargo planes was considered too high considering there's typically only a couple of drivers on board.

Coming soon to a theater near you, JOM's daddy in the remake of "They Were Expendable". :)

Your welcome. Agree that was their rationale but it's not like a blown up cargo plane can't cause damage on the ground-- they are currently looking at fire suppression systems for cargo aircraft due to several lithium battery events (so the cargo pilots aren't completely expendable, lol).

As to narciso's comment, the CIA reference was not that they investigated 800, but this..

I've read Cashill's book on it and was not impressed with his conclusion. Not really fully convinced of anything on this one either way. If it wasn't sabotage it was the only in-flight fuel tank explosion of a commercial carrier in history, which is a pretty good track record.

Anyone remember when we could deduct sales tax, credit card interest, medical costs (without having to spend a month in intensive care), and a hundred other deductions which offset the higher tax rates of the 80's?

H.R. -- I maintain that this was another more subtle cause for the mortgage bubble/meltdown. Before Reagan's tax reform, you bought a washer/dryer from Sears and put it on your Sears card. Bought a car from a car company and financed it with a car loan. Etc., etc. All of that interest was tax deductible, just like mortgage interest was tax deductible.

The interest rates for these various purposes were different, because the loans were not really very well collateralized. (If you buy a new car it loses about a third of its value as you drive it off the lot. So any loan with more than a 67-33 LTV iss under-collateralized.) Also the loan term was different depending upon the asset -- washing machines didn't have 30-year loans on them.

By retaining the deductibility of mortgage interest while eliminating it for every other form of loan, the tax reform created a whole new industry -- the home-equity credit industry. This is an entire business devoted to folding, spindling and mutilating general consumer debt and then spitting it out as deductible mortgage interest. There is lots of money tied up in those deductions, and so there is lots of room to shred those totally sensible credit practices from consumer loans.

Because of the novelty of equity credit, there was no history of how they would behave in bad credit scenarios, so they ended up being valued as plain old mortgages, which are much less risky assets. And all of a sudden we woke up in about 2006/2007 and realized that we had been undervaluing default risk for mortgages, for completely simple and understandable reasons.